The Science of Scaling

The Fed has a dual mandate -- maximum employment and price stability.?We are approaching full employment and generally have a persistently strong labor market. However, inflation is way too high, and it has been a significant drag on American households. President Biden and the Fed by extension is tasked with maintaining full employment while bringing inflation down. It is difficult to trade the equity markets and make predictions on unit volumes and pricing for most businesses. Manufacturing & construction are robust and consumer staples are outpacing discretionary by 19% which is the strongest we have seen since 2007. The strength of the industrial economy is likely to keep the US out of an economist defined recession, but it continues to be painful news for consumers.

I have pursued careers in consulting, banking, founding startups, and running corporate businesses. As I explored what I want for the next leg of my career I cautiously navigated dozens of conversations across my network with a focus on data. The noise of layoffs and even rescinded offers at high-flyers like Tesla and Coinbase should put all of us on notice that quantitative easing and money printing aren't actually forming a robust foundation of demand underneath the economy. It is hard to blame the Fed though, I recently had a nasty bout with Omicron that had me in Lenox Hill Hospital. All of a sudden the politics and economics of business instability and border closures from the pandemic was tangible for me. I for one am incredibly grateful that vaccines were created and distributed in record time. Add the Ukrainian conflict to the story as well as technology advances across industries and we have the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously. E.g. follow along at Tesla and observe Elon's "Alien Dreadnought" - (the machine that makes the machines). We are a long since passed the evolutions that created by the inventions of the printing press, sewing machine, and silicon chips. AI fueled by data is the next frontier. Yuval Noah Harari even has termed our new species, Homo Deus. Homo Deus explains how our unparalleled ability to control the world around us is turning us into something new.

This week I achieved a dream of mine to start a brilliant career at Walmart in a world that combines atoms and bits. My mandate at Walmart Data Ventures allows me to help us grow our intelligence business, Luminate and layer on new products and cross new markets. One of my favorite economists, John List, joined Walmart a month before me after stints at Lyft & Uber. Following in his footsteps I was drawn to Walmart as the leader in retail and the largest employer in the world. John List's book, The Voltage Effect espouses that concept that the only ideas worth pursuing are the ones with the potential to make a significant impact on human lives. Scale. It's a perfect fit with Walmart's mandate of making lives better for busy families with a trusted business that includes a broad assortment of goods, unbeatable prices, and a frictionless experience. John's book highlights many great concepts. Perhaps the most seminal one that hits me as a father is from his studies of pedagogy in Chicago Heights that suggest that the most profound qualities that come from childhood that bare success later in life are the skills of socialization, active listening, and delayed gratification. He later links this to studies of social behavior across fishing villages in Brazil that compares highly collectivist versus individualistic behaviors. You guessed it, prosocial behaviors that exhibit a high degree of trust and cooperation produce more fish.

Workplace culture isn't actually about the work. It is about understanding how people work together based on shared human values of trust, cooperation, security, and mutual respect. I am thrilled to be exploring data and insights at Walmart to advance our business initiatives because information drives forecasting and planning behavior for us and our partners. Most importantly, “If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will.” - Sam Walton